I'm actually really interested in that topic, because I just can not understand why CN from the days they took Toonami from weekdays and stuck it on Saturdays only, to the point of canceling Toonami outright, have been treating what I thought was a popular franchise so horribly.
Well, since you asked.
First, let's begin with the switch to Saturdays. The reason that was done was because parents complained about Toonami's shows being too violent, primarily Rurouni Kenshin and Yu Yu Hakusho. This gave Cartoon Network the idea of marketing Toonami primarily to preteens (which I think everyone was under the impression it was for to begin with), and thought Saturday would be the ideal time to air their shows. I suppose the theory was that since teens have homework to do immediately, or have extracurricular activities during weekday afternoons that it would be wiser to move it to Saturday night. However, Saturdays are generally a deadzone for most tv shows. Some shows were cancelled due to ratings, others due to not reaching the target demographic. Gundam Seed did not do as terrible as many think, but Toonami aimed to attract mostly pre-teens and children. Gundam Seed only did well with a teenage/adult audience, and so it was removed. It was a similar case with Yu Yu Hakusho: it did okay with children, but it TIED with DragonBallGT in the pre-teen and teen demographics. You have any idea how many kids in that category watched GT? LOTS. You'd think they would treat it well, but no. Because it showed its age, Toonami was worried that it would soon be a detriment and banished it to 5 am.
However, some of their shows did quite well. Naruto in particular was a surprise hit, as evidenced by it's early days, like the Naruto New Year's Eve and Naruto Hundo. It really did bring in the dough. It was certainly a hit with the kids; I saw a girl in my old kung-fu school come in wearing one of the headbands (just to clarify, she seemed between 9-12). While at first it seemed Naruto was Toonami's savior, in many ways it was also it's downfall. Naruto attracted huge amounts of children as well as teens, and that's when Toonami began to air programs aimed mostly at younger children, which probably in turn killed its core demographic.
Around 2007, after the mooninite incident in Boston, I believe the head of CN stepped down, and someone new came in (don't have the names, sorry) and that's particularly where I think things went bad. It's my understanding that the new head wants CN to become something akin to Disney, hence why we've suddenly got a bunch of live action programs on CN. Inside Jimmy's head comes to mind. It was advertised and promoted ten times as Naruto was, but it turned out kids wanted to see a ninja with ADD instead. Not taking the hint, they kept going down that path, and to some extent they suceeded, and rumor has it they don't want any anime on their program. Again, I don't think it has much to do with personal taste and possible racism; they're trying to model their channel after disney and nicklelodean, which focus on comedy and live action mostly. I think it was the point when Naruto reached the fillers were their plans really started to suceed.
Adult Swim seems to be having the same problems. Anime was taken off the weekday schedules, although there did seem to be some legitmacy for that. While the anime block never did nearly as good as the Futurama marathons, for a Saturday line-up it was holding up quite well, consistently beating Spike TV in the ratings. However, demographics came into play again: Adult Swim aims to attract adults, but it was mostly kids between 12 and 19 years of age who watched anime on their block. Adult Swim consistently tried to put some of their originals on the block in an attempt to increase ratings, but their own work actually seemed to do worse on Saturday then it did elsewhere. I see even more evidence that the current directors don't want anime on that show either: Code Geass was supposed to be the highest rated show in the block when it aired (it didn't come close to Cowboy Bebop or InuYasha, but better than everything else it had), yet they still bumped it down to 5 am.
Overall, I think it's a mix between demographic changes and Cartoon Network's desire to become something else entirely. I think this is just a phase Anime in America is undergoing right now; I'm sure one of the companies will find a way to turn it all around, but they need to find a way to attract new fans. That's what I think really killed Toonami and Adult Swim Action in the end: They keep relying on the old fans they had before, but fail to attract new ones.
I don't really need Naruto or any other anime on Cartoon Network; I'll gladly take it on any other network, provided it's at a reasonable time.
Hope that gives you some sense of what's going on.
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My only complaint with Viz and what they did with the first few Naruto box sets... the dubs dont match up with the english subtitles. Wtf? Seriously
Most dubs cannot match their dubs and subtitled versions perfectly. If they had to make a 90% accurate translation, there's a good chance of either finishing a sentance before the character's mouth stops moving, or even after they stopped talking. It's all about finding dialouge to match the mouth flaps. It's perfectly fine, so long as the same message is communicated. Just watch an old dub of a Godzilla movie and you'll see what I mean.
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